The present invention relates to a seat arrangement for a passenger car, more specifically to a multi-purpose passenger car, for example, a station wagon type of car in which the trunk space or loading space forms part of the passenger space, whereby two seat rows are arranged one behind the other.
The requirement that passenger vehicles shall be versatile and economical has received more and more attention in recent times and has become a rather important basis for the designing of passenger cars. As a result, multi-purpose construction features have been employed heretofore in passenger cars. For example, a rear seat construction is known in which the back rest proper is foldable in the forward direction as viewed in the longitudinal axis of the vehicle, whereby to increase the loading space. It is also known to fold the back rest of the rear seats in a forward direction, while simultaneously tilting the entire rear seat forwardly, whereby a relatively large loading and trunk space may be achieved. Such vehicles are usually provided with a rear door so that a passenger vehicle may be transformed with a few modifying operations into a utility vehicle, such as a station wagon.
It is also known to divide the rear back rest into two individual back rests, which may be tilted independently of each other in the forward direction so that one portion of the vehicle, for example, one half may be used as a loading space of increased length, whereas the other portion with the back rest in the normal position may be used for transporting, for example, a third passenger. The dividing of the back rest into two portions has taken into account that a continuous seating bench does not provide sufficient lateral support for the passenger, especially at higher speeds and particularly when negotiating a curve at higher speeds as frequently happens in a passenger car. This development has also taken into account that quite frequently the entire width of a passenger car is not needed for the transporting of goods, whereas it is often necessary to have space on the back seat for a further passenger.
The just described types of prior art passenger car modifications increases the versatility of passenger cars described above. However, such modification as well as all other prior art passenger car modifications have the substantial disadvantage that the passengers on the rear seat are not accommodated as comfortably as is the case for the driver and the passenger sitting on the front seat. This is so, especially because the leg space between the rear seats and the back rests of the front seats is usually relatively small, especially when the driver and the other passenger on the front seat take full advantage of the normally provided possibility of adjusting the front seat or seats in the longitudinal direction of the vehicle axis by moving the front seat as far back as possible in order to provide as much leg room as possible for the front seats.
Another factor which accounts for the fact that the rear seats are relatively less comfortable than the front seats is seen in that the rear back rest is not adjustable in its position relative to the horizontal. Such a modification would substantially increase the costs, especially of prior art station wagon type vehicles which, as described above, are equipped with a back rest for increasing the loading space by tilting the back rest forward in these so called multi-purpose vehicles.
It is further known in connection with an ambulance vehicle to provide a total of three seating rows, one arranged behind the other, whereby the seats of the middle row are adjustable individually or in common in the longitudinal direction of the vehicle, whereby the leg room for the middle row of seats or for the last row of seats may be increased. This seating arrangement is disclosed in German Utility Model Pat. No. 1,786,696. However, in this ambulance there is a separate wall located immediately behind the back rest of the front seat row, whereby the space inside the vehicle is separated into a driver cabin and into a transport space for the transporting of sick or injured persons. Accordingly, the second row of seats actually is comparable with the row of seats in the driver cabin, because the leg room for the first row in the loading space of the ambulance is determined by the separation wall and the leg room of the third row of seats is adjustable only by the adjustment of the middle row, which is just the same as in conventional passenger cars, where the leg room of the rear seat is determined by the adjustment of the front seats. Thus, the just mentioned German Utility Model does not give any hint with regard to the desirability of the adjustment of the rear seats independently of the adjustment of the front seats.